â€¢ The Village Voice‘s Rob Harvilla, like myself, is obsessed with Janelle Monae. Unlike me, he’s gotten to see her perform live multiple times. I’ve had to make do with YouTube, which is a poor stand-in. Monae is appearing at this year’s Bumbershoot, which is pretty much enough to make me want to spend Labor Day weekend in Seattle.

â€¢ Cory Doctorow: Still all over the internets. Naturally. Doctorow’s next novel will be serialized on Tor.com; a new piece of the 81-part whole goes up each Monday, Wednesday and Friday until the physical book’s release in November.

â€¢ And speaking of art, Alex Eben Meyer (whose style particularly observant readers may remember from such covers as Winter Reading 2006 and Swizzle 2007) has a novel idea for how to get back at those nasty drivers who cut you off without signaling. Pigeons, however, aren’t quite so plentiful here as they are in Brooklyn. Perhaps the (annoying, aggravating, start-squawking-at-five-in-the-morning-damn-their-little-bird-eyes) starlings would volunteer?

And with that, I’m off to see Moon and be disturbed by Kevin Spacey as a rather referential space computer.